The Sex Thimble Who Made the 60s Swing; Council House Boy, Comic Genius, Serial Womaniser and Hollywood Star - Dudley Moore Shocked and Delighted Us. but Did the Last of His Four Marriages Hasten His Tragic Decline?

Beginning of article

Byline: GLENYS ROBERTS

BRITAIN had never seen anything like it. Dudley Moore, genial, witty, irreverent, performing his popular parody of the grand pianist Dame Myra Hess before an audience helpless with laughter.

It was the start of the Satirical Sixties and Moore, together with Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, had brought their history-making revue Beyond The Fringe into the West End from the Edinburgh Festival.

It was to change the face of comedy in Britain. Social and political satire had been launched into the mainstream, setting a vogue for irreverence from which we are all still reeling.

Those of us who were there, when the whole mood of the country altered from repressed to swinging, let out an audible sigh of relief.

Cook and Moore became an institution with their groundbreaking TV series Not Only . . .

But Also, which featured the 'Dagenham dialogues' between Pete and Dud, the philosophers in shabby raincoats.

There was the film Bedazzled for which Dudley wrote a splendid score. He and Cook produced the outrageous but screamingly funny Derek and Clive recordings. And Dudley performed with a highly-acclaimed jazz trio.

But it was not enough for Dudley. The council house boy from Essex then went to Hollywood, where he starred in the movie 10 with Bo Derek and Julie Andrews, and Arthur with Liza Minnelli and Sir John Gielgud.

Despite his club foot and tiny stature (which gave him a lifelong inferiority complex), he became the sex symbol of the Eighties. It seems impossible that he is no longer with us.

…